Friday, 16 September 2011

Forgotten Book - Trial and Error

Another Anthony Berkeley for today's Forgotten Book! And this one is an absolute classic - Trial and Error, first published in 1937, and reissued by Penguin a decade later with an introduction in which Berkeley defends his plot twist which depends upon a private prosecution for murder.

This is, from the opening scene to the twist in the final sentence, a joy to read. It blends humour and mystery with a deep cynicism about justice, politicians, and newspapers. Could have been written yesterday, then!

The set-up is brilliant. Mr Todhunter is terminally ill, so he decides to do the world a kindness by murdering someone who is truly appalling. He carries out his plan, only to find that an innocent person is charged and convicted. When Todhunter confesses, nobody believes him. So he has to prove his guilt - but it turns out to be very tricky to do so. he turns to Ambrose Chitterwick, one of Berkeley's series sleuths, for help.

Berkeley was here at the very top of his form, producing plot twist after plot twist with seemingly effortless skill. Yet within a couple of years, he had given up novel writng for good. He was a real loss to the genre. Some may argue that he was a writer of his time,but I think there's something very contemporary about his best work, which makes it timeless. In my opinion, he wrote four outstanding books, plus some other good ones. This is one of the top four, no question.

About Me

I am a British crime writer, and the author of eighteen crime novels, including series set in Liverpool and the Lake District, as well as winner of the CWA Short Story Dagger and CWA Margery Allingham Prize'. My latest book is The Golden Age of Murder, a ground-breaking study of the genre between the wars, and I am consultant for the British Library's Classic Crime series, as well as archivist to both the CWA and the Detection Club. I have edited twenty-four anthologies, published about sixty short stories, and written seven other non-fiction books..